After finishing their mid-term exams, today my students were given the day off to go hiking in the Great Children’s Park in Busan. I was told that I would be coming too, which did not exactly fill me with joy for a number of reasons I shan’t go into here for fear of sounding like a right Moaning Minnie (as my Mum might say…hi Mum!). 

My day began with a very confusing bus trip. Yesterday my co-teacher told me to get on the number 33 from outside my apartment and get off at the Children’s Park, where she would meet me. Easy, I thought, before realising that all of the stops on this particular route are both written and announced in Korean. Happily I discovered that the circuit terminated shortly before the Park itself, so all I had to do was follow some students I noticed were from my school. Lucky they were there too, as it turned out that my co-teacher had forgotten to tell me that the Park was actually a ten minute walk from the bus terminal. Oh, Korea.

We gathered together our 35ish students from class 3-7 and began the 2 hour walk to Seonam Temple, where we would picnic and have a mooch about. Thankfully it wasn’t too hot a day so the walk wasn’t unbearable and I realised halfway through that it was actually incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately, with such a large amount of Korean students in tow, I didn’t stop to take photos. 

When we got to the picnic spot, everything was pretty much as you’d expect from a class trip. Food was consumed, games were played, photos were taken for the sake of the foreigner and everyone went home happy. On the way back I was able to have a look at the actual temple, which was everything a woodland, mountainside temple should be. 

All in all not a bad day…and a bloody marvellous day when you consider that I was being paid for it.